Countries With The Best Business English

I can has cheezeburger? Hey, nobody's perfect. The best business English goes to the multinational aerospace companies.

China might have more people, but when it comes to the language of global capitalism, English is the gold standard.

How many of us have had to call for IT services only to end up getting rerouted to an India line and have our computer problems get totally lost in translation. I'm trying to picture a guy from Alabama operating a Windows XP machine from a houseboat trying to understand a girl half his age in Hyderabad explain where to type in c-colon-backslash-run.

One in five employees working for a U.S. tech company are not native speakers. Brazil and even U.S. neighbor Mexico score below 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 in business English proficiency, with 10 being advanced and 4-6 being basic, according to a business English survey released this week by the GlobalEnglish Corporation (GEC).

Sure it is GlobalEnglish's best interest that more foreigners study the language of commerce, but according to McKinsey & Company, only 13% of graduates from emerging countries are suitable for employment in global companies, and the number one reason cited is a lack of English skills.

Four out of 10 global workers from 76 countries were ranked as Business English beginners, by the GEC survey. That ranks them as having an average understanding of English, able to hold a conversation, but not lead one. The majority (60%) of the 108,000 people who took the GEC test from the represented countries scored between a 4.0 and 7.0, indicating an inability to take an active role in business discussions through global conference calls or perform complex tasks such as presentation development and customer or partner negotiations.

I love a good accent as much as anybody. And as an expat American who lived 10 years in Brazil (left in 2010), there is a lot more leniency when you can't speak Portuguese like a native than there is when you can't speak English. One colleague of mine spoke Portuguese so poorly, that even the Americans and Brits made fun of him behind his back. Oh, those were the days.

But serious career-minded individuals who hope to work as foreign correspondents for O Globo TV in New York, Brazil's biggest broadcaster, will need solid English. As will the IT service guys coming to the U.S. from India on business visas, and the Russia venture capitalists looking to close deals with investors in Silicon Valley.

This is partially why the Philippines has taken over India as a hub for call centers. Their English is better. The islands attained a score above 7, putting them within range of a high proficiency that indicates an ability to lead business discussions and perform complex tasks. India? A low 5.57.

"The current shortage of talent with the aptitude to speak, write, present, sell and service customers in English has become a high performance dilemma for individual companies, and even countries," says Mahesh Ram, GlobalEnglish CEO.

Around 92% of non-English speakers say that speaking the language is important to their career growth, but only 7% of them say that their skill level is adequate to move up the ladder and get offered more international opportunities, according to a Global English survey conducted in 2010.

Not surprisingly, India ranks highest in this year's Business[/entity] English Survey among the BRICs with 5.57, followed by China at 4.4, Russia at 3.6 and Brazil at 2.95. The countries were ranked by size of labor force.

According to survey results, global companies are 7% worse at communicating in English than they were a year ago. I'm just glad I don't have to speak, read or write in Cantonese.

I've spent 20 years as a reporter for the best in the business, including as a Brazil-based staffer for WSJ. Since 2011, I focus on business and investing in the big emerging markets exclusively for Forbes.